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Ohio Senate President Keith Faber (R-Celina) this week reiterated his concern that Governor John Kasich may bankrupt the state’s Medicaid program if the Ohio Controlling Board rejects Kasich’s request to spend Obamacare funding.

Last month, the Kasich Administration submitted a Medicaid state plan amendment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requesting to expand Ohio’s Medicaid program to cover the new population set by Obamacare. HHS approved the amendment on October 10.

Gov. Kasich has not issued an executive order to enact the Obamacare expansion, but Sen. Faber suggested on Monday that Kasich would need to do so to expand eligibility.

Faber warned that if the Kasich Administration expands Medicaid and the Controlling Board refuses to appropriate Obamacare funds, ”current Medicaid recipients — you know, kids and moms and people that are currently covered under the Medicaid program — would not have services.”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily a good result, and so I would imagine the Controlling Board on Monday will give the governor authority to move [Obamacare money] from that federal line to the state line.”

A week earlier, the staunchly pro-expansion Columbus Dispatchreported that Sen. Faber had made similar comments. Dispatch reporter Jim Siegel speculated, “could GOP legislative leaders who have thus far resisted expansion argue that they are being forced to go along – or else bankrupt a system that serves 2.4 million Ohioans?”

Asked on October 15 whether he believes the Obamacare Medicaid expansion will be good for Ohio, Sen. Faber indicated surrender to the Republican governor.

Faber said he did not plan to replace either of the two state senators who serve on the seven-member Controlling Board, and declined to say how he expects any member of the board to vote.

“I don’t know that I would’ve necessarily been a fan of expanding Medicaid, but that’s not the question anymore,” Faber told reporters. ”Now the question is how do we do Medicaid reforms that are going to make the system more efficient, more effective, and provide coverage to more people for less money.”

Asked to explain why he would “go along with” the Obamacare Medicaid expansion after months of opposition from conservatives, Faber said, “I don’t know that we’re doing the Medicaid expansion — the governor is doing the Medicaid expansion.”

Faber explained that Medicaid consumed 16.9 percent of Ohio’s budget in 1980 and 50.2 percent of the state budget this year.

“I believe in legislative issues, but on this issue, the legislature’s given the governor authority a number of years ago,” Sen. Faber said. ”We tried to take that authority away in the budget; the governor used his line-item veto to keep his authority, and so I think he can do it.”

The Ohio Revised Code dictates that the Controlling Board, however, “shall take no action which does not carry out the legislative intent of the general assembly.”

In February, Gov. Kasich included the Obamacare Medicaid expansion in his biennial budget plan only to have the proposal removed by the Ohio House.

As Sen. Faber acknowledged this week, both houses of the legislature expressed their opposition to Medicaid expansion with budget language forbidding it.

With Sen. Faber now repeatedly suggesting the governor will threaten to bankrupt Ohio’s Medicaid program in order to extend eligibility to hundreds of thousands of able-bodied childless adults, John Kasich’s governing style is converging ever more rapidly with Barack Obama’s.

When the so-called "public option" single-payer healthcare program was scrapped during the legislative "debate" over ObamaCare in 2009, lawmakers working on the bill created the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program as a compromise. The non-profit co-op program is meant to compete with private, for-profit health insurance plans in the individual and small group markets. The 2010 healthcare law provided $3.4 billion in start-up funding to help get the program off the ground.

Sometimes a man’s just got to take a stand. Rand Paul did it his 13-hour filibuster on drone strikes, Ted Cruz did it in his 21-hour floor speech to defund ObamaCare, and now Mike Lee is invoking an obscure Senate procedure rule to completely repeal everyone’s least favorite health care law.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on Thursday showing that undercover consumers were allowed to re-enroll in health plans on the federal ObamaCare Exchange. The bogus enrollees had outstanding document issues that should have prevented them from obtaining subsidies for coverage.

More Americans paid ObamaCare's individual mandate tax for 2014 than previously estimated, according to a new report from the Internal Revenue Service's National Taxpayer Advocate. In January, the Treasury Department projected that up to 6 million households would be subject to the tax because they did not purchase a government-approved health insurance plan.

A new analysis finds that the health insurance plans offered on ObamaCare exchanges offer a choice of 34 percent fewer health care providers, on average, than plans offered on the private market. The report specifies that:

America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade association that lobbies on behalf of insurance companies in Washington and in state legislatures, announced on Wednesday that Marilyn Tavenner, the former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), will serve as its president and chief operating officer. Tavenner oversaw the disastrous implementation of ObamaCare during her tenure, which, some suspect, ultimately led in her resignation from CMS in January.

The Supreme Court has now largely upheld ObamaCare, with a carve-out from the contraceptive mandate for closely held companies, the first three times the law has been challenged in the Court. Because of this, it is difficult to have much faith that the Court will ever overturn the law based on constitutional concerns. However, there is still another case working its way through the DC Circuit, Sissel v. HHS, challenging ObamaCare based on the Origination Clause.

Health insurance companies are signaling huge health insurance premium increases ahead of the 2016 open enrollment period. This is due to the droves of older and sicker consumers who signed up for coverage on the ObamaCare Exchanges, according to a report from The New York Times. Requests submitted by insurance are approved by state regulators, such as state insurance commissioners, but the proposed rates reflect a higher utilization of healthcare than expected.